KG Kannabiran,
President, PUCL has issued the following statement today, April 28:

On 25 April 6
members persons of the Racha Konda Dalam were killed in Chityala, Nalgonda District.
Yesterday, on 27th April were killed in Chandragiri Hills in Warangal. Every
day two or three members of the Naxalite factions other than CPIML (PW). There
were small headlines in the press. The tally for the year 2000 already is around
120. The encounter that took place in Chityala Mandala two women were killed.

In the encounter
in Chandragiri Hills there were five women. All these are very young persons.
Some of them appears to be teenagers. All these dead appears to have been surrounded
and attacked by hurling bombs and hand grenades from a safe distance. This hardly
can be described as an encounter. The injured police person obviously was injured
while hurling the grenade ineptly.

When killing has
become part administrative practice, hurling grenades and bombs for killing
will really not make any difference. When impunity becomes part of the administrative
practice of the state it hardly matters how they are killed. To sanction by
our silence this administrative practice of killing people, whether they be
naxalites or rowdies, is to permit erosion of civilized and lawful governance.
By our brutal silence we are paying a heavy price in terms of human and democratic
values and none of us are conscious of this.

The situation calls
for intervention by all sections of the people to prevent further escalation
of this violence. Without people's active and informed intervention neither
politics nor governance can be disciplined. We call upon the people to voice
their growing concern about this endemic violence in the State and lend support
to the efforts made towards terminating this violence by the various civil liberties
and human rights groups and the efforts specially made in this behalf by the
Committee of the Concerned Citizens.